This invention relates to business data analysis.
Business organizations typically manage a portfolio of products on a global basis spanning across geographic areas such as regions, countries, or other areas. Product managers may be assigned to manage certain products in a geographic area. The business organizations may periodically evaluate the current financial performance of the product portfolio in order make decisions regarding future allocations of marketing funds to the appropriate product manager. To make such future allocations, the business organizations may require future financial data based on current financial data as well as data that may have the most impact on the financial data.
However, current business data analysis tools may not be able to assist the business organizations in making these future business decisions. For example, these tools may not be able to gather current data into a consistent format so as to be able to compare the data across a range of products and geographic areas. Moreover, these tools may lack the ability to produce accurate future financial data because these tools may not have access to accurate current data to be able to produce accurate future data. These tools may also lack the ability to select or evaluate business data that may have a significant affect on the current data. As a result, business organizations may not be able to allocate resources to the appropriate product or geographic area that may be most profitable resulting in missed marketing opportunities.